Tag Archive for "Central Park"
On our walk in Central Park this morning, we saw this guy jogging and juggling at the same time.
I pointed at my camera, he grinned in response and I snapped this picture.
I came home and googled a bit, to see if I would find out anything about this. I ended up learning that “joggling” is a well-established form of exercise and those who engage in this are called “jogglers.”
Here is the wikipedia entry on the subject.
So if you ever get bored jogging, now you know what to do.
Tuesday night the New York Philharmonic Orchestra gave a free concert in Central Park. In the morning we laid down a sheet and when we came back in the evening we had a front-row seat to the whole thing.
The past couple of years, this concert’s initial schedule date has been rained out and they’ve had to re-schedule it. This time around, despite a weather report that predicted “scattered thundershowers” - there was no problem. The weather was great.
The evening’s program was:
Shostakovich: Festive Overture
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4, Italian
Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture
Sousa: Washington Post March
Sousa: Liberty Bell March
Sousa: The Stars and Stripes Forever
Just a note about Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March” - it’s also been used (and may be more commonly known) as the theme music to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
In that spirit, this year the NY Philharmonic did something that was “completely different” than past years. They allowed the audience to make a choice as to what the orchestra would play for an encore. The conductor, Bramwell Tovey (who had everyone laughing with his humorous remarks between pieces), gave us directions as to how to vote using text messaging and the two choices were between “Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov or “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix.
The votes were counted by the end of the intermission and according to the director more than 60,000 votes were cast. The votes were “overwhelmingly” in favor of “Purple Haze.” It was awesome.
The experience was even better because of a couple of good friends who were with us. I won’t divulge any names but will simply say that it was a couple I’ve known since my 1993 BYU Jerusalem study abroad experience.